Thursday, October 13, 2016

As your presidential duties will soon expire, I want you make sure your Nobel
Peace Prize is deserved: Please instruct your officials to return to the path of
negotiations with Russia, be it the Syrian crisis, the lapse of the plutonium
nuclear arms control deal or Ukraine.

By so doing, you will bequeath to your successor—whomever it might be—a solid
foundation on which to build a healthier and more peaceful Planet Earth. The
United States should re-commit to the policy of non-interference in domestic
affairs abroad that our Founding Fathers consistently proclaimed and adhered to.
Instead of imposing our cherished values of “free-market” and “democracy”
abroad, let us rely on the wisdom of a man who risked the reputation of a
“traitor” when he defied King George’s war on American colonies.

I am talking about Edmund Burke, the British philosopher and father of modern
conservatism. Like ancient Greeks he argued that each country is entitled to its
own form of government, be it democracy, republic, monarchy, tyranny or
despotism, each of which tend to evolve into its opposite. Therefore, the
colonies do not have to bow to the King. Burke’s monument now graces Washington
DC.

In respect to Russia, remember that Empress Catherine the Great refused King
George’s request to send Russian Cossacks help him quell George Washington’s
rebellion. During the Civil War, while Europe’s powers-- Great Britain, France,
and Spain—tried to take advantage of President Lincoln’s problems with the
South, Tsar Alexander II who had just abolished serfdom in Russia, sent Russian
Navy to the harbors of New York and San Francisco as a gesture of Good Will.
More recently, in spite of the USSR’s unconcealed hostility to “Capitalist”
America, the

two countries were able to co-operate in the defeat of Nazi Germany and
Japan, and then keep the bitterness of Cold War in check.

After 1991, the Communist Russia is no more. The New Russia has been
espousing the same values of private property, free enterprise, multi-party free
elections, secular government, and freedom of speech and religion—as we do. To
be sure, the post-1991 Russian road has been rocky, but this because we meddled
on the side of the Russian oligarchs and because it takes years and decades to
cultivate free enterprise and democracy in a country that had none for 73 years.

Krasnov presents his book to Boris Yeltsin In late 1980s, when I was writing
Russia Beyond Communism: A Chronicle of National Rebirth (Westview Press, 1991),
Soviet soldiers were forbidden to wear crucifix. Now General Sergei Shoigu,
Russia’s Minister of Defense, would not enter the Red Square without crossing
himself publicly. President Vladimir Putin is regularly seen in a church in
front of an icon and has addressed Russian Muslims in a mosque and Jews in a
synagogue. It’s a truly tectonic shift in global affairs since the end of the
Cold War in 1991.

Putin in a Russian Church

Therefore, I say, Mr. President, take a breath of fresh air and do what it
takes to make your Nobel Peace Prize count: Leave the legacy of peace-seeking
negotiations with Russia from which your successor will not deviate lest he or
she be called an abominable war monger.

More than any other two countries, Russia and the United States are called
upon safeguard Peace, Freedom and Commerce not just from San Francisco to
Vladivostok, but on the entire Planet Earth. So help us God!